Middle Schools

Got an hour a week to spend with a local student? The San Francisco Education Fund, a nonprofit that partners with the district to support underserved children in city schools, is recruiting volunteers to spend one-on-one time with students at Everett, Mission High, and James Lick in the Mission. The volunteers, who must commit to about an hour a week...

Students, parents and teachers walked out of Buena Vista Horace Mann school Wednesday morning to publicly declare their support for undocumented immigrants, women, and other targets of disparaging remarks made by president-elect Donald Trump. Some 200 people of all ages streamed onto the sidewalk of Valencia Street, carrying signs made by the children with messages of solidarity, chanting “build kindness,...

If a new ballot measure passes in November, San Francisco may become the first city in California to give non-citizens a vote in local school board elections. Proposition N, which would let parents and guardians of students in the San Francisco school district vote for school board members, is critical in a city where immigrants account for 35 percent of the population, say supporters. More...

For the past 25 years, Mission resident Dan Sudran and his small team of instructors at the Mission Science Workshop have provided underserved students with a safe space outside of the classroom to tinker, explore, and wonder about nature, technology, and science. On Thursday, the workshop celebrated its quarter century anniversary by opening the doors to its auto shop-turned-science-lab to...

A private elementary school is eyeing one of the vacant commercial spaces below the Vida apartment complex on Mission Street near 22nd Street as a potential location for its expansion into middle school. Alta Vista School, a nonprofit private school, will have a public pre-application meeting on April 7 to get community feedback before it applies for a change of...

Sometimes what it takes to get kids to learn abstract skills is to send them outdoors – at least that’s what San Francisco educators are finding as they send their students on trips through Outward Bound, an organization dedicated to getting kids outdoors. For many city kids, suddenly up and leaving on a five-day backpacking trip is no joke. Josh...

A new computer lab created to help parents of Everett Middle School students become tech-savvy was unveiled on Monday. Equipped with five desktop computers, high speed internet access, the lab will offer workshops and classes. The lab is funded by Facebook and the League of United Latin America Citizens, a national group that works to empower Latinos socially, economically, and technologically. The group...

Linda Perez, a teacher at Buena Vista Horace Mann, shares her home with nine people — only two of them are family members. Frank Lara teaches fourth grade at the same school and has crashed on friends’ couches or shared a bedroom to make ends meet, all while struggling to repay a mountain of student loan debt. Laura Rocha, who...

A few months ago, I was on my way to work when I passed by La Copa Loca ice cream shop on 22nd and Capp and saw a crowd of kids enjoying the sun, joking and savoring their ice cream outside. Their faces were familiar because several had taken a 2012 reporting workshop I had volunteered to teach with another...

Anthony Velez, 13, is tired of trudging around the Tenderloin with his family to find something to eat that won’t give him a stomachache. He misses his mom’s home cooking. “I’m used to having a refrigerator,” said the eighth grader at Everett Middle School. He’s at a diner across the street from the Hamilton House, where he, his mother, and...

Start-ups in San Francisco don’t all look the same. While many think of pink mustaches or small machines that make paying with a card easy, there is also the kind of start-up that makes it possible for an 8-year-old to explain the process of how a sundial works or examine the language of a children’s book about dragons. “I noticed...

Principal Lena Van Haren called 8th graders at Everett Middle School to the auditorium to hear about high school applications. They filed in, sat, and waited. Then, District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, who could easily pass for a professor, walked on stage. “You all have been tricked,” he said. “I am not from the school district, and I am not...

While students at Marshall Elementary and George Moscone Elementary schools have scored well in state standardized tests, doing so has helped put them behind in acquiring technology. Better test scores meant they lost out on the $45 million, three-year federal School Improvement Grants that added computers, iPads and laptops at the Mission District’s struggling schools. But being tech deficient has...

Laura Pogio, an 8th grader at Everett Middle School who lives in the Mission, told U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan on Tuesday that she thinks transportation is the hardest thing about school. She takes Muni the 1.6 miles from her home at Harrison and 24th streets to Everett at Church and 17th, but generally arrives...